🇨🇳 Chinese AI startup Kimi claims to beat OpenAI and Anthropic 🇨🇳
China's open-source model matches frontier performance at fraction of cost.

Moonshot AI released Kimi K2 Thinking, a groundbreaking trillion-parameter open-source reasoning model that matches or exceeds GPT-5 and Claude Sonnet 4.5 on critical benchmarks, achieving 44.9% on Humanity's Last Exam and 71.3% on SWE-Bench Verified. The model costs under $5M to train and offers pricing nearly 10-20x cheaper than competing frontier models at $0.15 per 1M input tokens. Despite its massive size, it activates only 32B parameters per inference, supports 256k-token context windows, and can autonomously perform 200-300 sequential tool calls. Released under a Modified MIT License, this represents China significantly closing the AI capability gap with U.S. frontier models while democratizing access to state-of-the-art reasoning capabilities.

🔧 Google upgrades Deep Research and Opal 🔧
AI customization made simple with just words

Google's Gemini chatbot now integrates seamlessly with Gmail, Drive, Docs, and Chat, enabling users to draw context and information directly from their workspace into research workflows. The enhanced Deep Research feature can create comprehensive research plans and detailed reports by combining personal workspace data with web searches, offering a more personalized and powerful research experience. Google is simultaneously rolling out access to Opal, its no-code app builder platform, to users in 160+ countries, significantly expanding its availability. The upgrades are currently available on desktop, with mobile access planned for future releases.

💼 OpenAI rejects federal AI bailout guarantee 💼
CEO contradicts CFO after White House firmly rejects government backing.

CEO Sam Altman clarified that OpenAI will not seek government bailouts for its debts, directly contradicting earlier comments from CFO Sarah Friar who suggested the company wanted federal guarantees for infrastructure spending. Friar had told the Wall Street Journal that OpenAI sought a federal "backstop" to finance AI investments, later admitting she "muddied the point" with poor word choice. White House AI czar David Sacks firmly rejected the concept of federal bailouts for AI companies. Altman reinforced this stance on social media, stating OpenAI opposes government guarantees for private AI buildouts and that "we should fail" if the company "screws up."

INTERESTING TO KNOW

📊 AI boom masks broader economic weakness 📊

While Big Tech and AI companies experience unprecedented growth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent acknowledged that "sectors of the economy are in recession," particularly housing and manufacturing. Employers announced 153,000 job cuts in October—the worst month for layoffs since 2003—with total 2025 layoffs surpassing 1 million. Meanwhile, mentions of "AI" during S&P 500 earnings calls exceeded 10,000 for the first time in history, highlighting the growing divide between AI-driven sectors and traditional industries.

🚗 Tesla approves Musk's trillion-dollar AI pivot 🚗

Tesla investors endorsed the largest corporate compensation package in history, backing Elon Musk's ambitious vision to transform the automaker into an AI and robotics powerhouse. Musk predicts that approximately 80% of Tesla's future value will derive from Optimus humanoid robot sales rather than traditional vehicle sales, signaling a dramatic strategic pivot for the company. The vote demonstrates extraordinary shareholder confidence in Musk's leadership and long-term AI/robotics vision despite the company's current challenges.